Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Fully-loaded ELCOT desktops at less than Rs. 20,000 apiece

CHENNAI: The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) has decided to supply fully-loaded desktops from reputed manufacturers for less than Rs.20,000 apiece.

However, this limited period offer is restricted to State and Central government offices and organisations such as Life Insurance Corporation of India and General Insurance Corporation. Education institutions and deemed universities will be covered in the next phase.

Four models will be made available to these organisations at Rs.19,500 plus VAT at four per cent. Right now, ELCOT officials are not willing to name the manufacturers.

As per the proposal, the desktop will come with Intel core 2 duo processor 2.2 Ghz, 2MB L2 cache or AMD Athlon 64x2 5600 plus processor, 2.8 Ghz and 2x1 MB L2 cache along with 500 GB hard disk drive, 1 GB RAM, 19 inches TFT digital monitor with strapped-on speakers, optical mouse, standard keyboard and DVD writer. The system comes with pre-loaded Linux software.

Talking to The Hindu, ELCOT Managing Director C. Umashankar said: “What we are trying to achieve is to provide the laptops and desktops at cheaper rate to students and government offices to bridge the digital divide. This price has been arrived at through tendering process.”

According to Mr. Umashankar, it would cost another 25 per cent if one were to procure it from the open market. To begin with, ELCOT planned to sell 50,000 units to government organisations, LIC and GIC through the normal process and then 100,000 units to educational institutions and deemed universities through a special process.

ELCOT would start receiving orders from the third week of March and delivery would be from April 2008. For educational institutions, the delivery would commence in June.

“These desktops will not be offered to individuals. It is meant for organisations and if a bonafide student wants to purchase it, he/she has to come through the institution concerned,” he added.

This is the second attempt by ELCOT. In the first instance, it offered laptops to bonafide students at Rs.30,350. Though ELCOT planned to sell 50,000 models, it ended up selling around 600 units, following objection from dealers saying it affected their margins heavily.

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